CHILDREN OF WIND AND THE
CLAN OF PEACE

FIONA MACLEOD

I will tell this Legend as simply but also with what beauty I can, because
the words of the old Highland woman, who told it to me,...though simple
were beautiful with ancient idiom.

We must go back near twenty hundred years.... It was in the last month of
the last year of the seven years' silence and peace: the seventh year in
the mortal life of Jesus the Christ. It was on the twenty-fifth day of
that month, the day of His holy birth.

It was a still day. The little white flowers that were called Breaths of
Hope and that we now call Stars of Bethlehem were so hushed in quiet that
the shadows of moths lay on them like the dark motionless violet in the
hearts of pansies. In the long swards of tender grass the multitude of the
daisies were white as milk faintly stained with flusht dews fallen from
roses. On the meadows of white poppies were long shadows blue as the blue
lagoons of the sky among drifting snow-white moors of cloud. Three white
aspens on the pastures were in a still sleep: their tremulous leaves made
no rustle, though there was a soundless wavering fall of little dusky
shadows, as in the dark water of a pool where birches lean in the yellow
hour of the frostfire. Upon the pastures were ewes and lambs sleeping, and
yearling kids opened and closed their onyx eyes among the garths of white
clover.

It was the Sabbath, and Jesus walked alone. When He came to a little rise
in the grass He turned and looked back at the house where His parents
dwelled. Joseph sat on a bench, with bent shoulders, and was dreaming with
fixt gaze into the west, as seamen stare across the interminable wave at
the pale green horizons that are like the grassy shores of home. Mary was
standing, dressed in long white raiment, white as a lily, with her right
hand shading her eyes as she looked to the east, dreaming her dream.

The young Christ sighed, but with the love of all love in His heart. "So
shall it be till the day of days," He said aloud; "even so shall the
hearts of men dwell among shadows and glories, in the West of passing
things: even so shall that which is immortal turn to the East and watch
for the coming of Joy through the Gates of Life."

At the sound of His voice He heard a sudden noise as of many birds, and
turned and looked beyond the low upland where He stood. A pool of pure
water lay in the hollow, fed by a ceaseless wellspring, and round it and
over it c